A Gotham City Murder Ballad
by obakeneko
Summary: Hitman meets Highlander... right between the eyes - it gets a little difficult when the corpse wont stay a corpse. I killed Kenny.
1. Rooftop serenade

Just imagine the usual disclaimers.  
  
Hitman was written by Garth Ennis, drawn by John McCrea and published DC-Comics.  
  
Highlander well you know.... I mixed the movie and the TV-series - but I really wanted to kill Kenny.  
  
I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing.   
  
The air was acid, sulfurous, and thick enough to cut with a dull hammer. Well maybe not quite that thick. But close enough, a sharp Hammer might work.   
  
It wasn't exactly my idea of a fun time to be sittin' on a sticky flat roof, heated all day by the Gotham City excuse of a summer sun. A sick orange ball of fire blastin' all day down a smog-red sky. Well it was warm I'll grant you that, more like friggin' hellfires, not to mention the heavy humidity risin' up from the harbor and the river. It felt like blasted Florida except for the smell.   
  
Gotham City stinks. There is no other way to say this. But grow up here, preferably somewhere like the Cauldron, and you get used to it an' it starts tellin' you things, secret things.   
  
The man on the other side of the street hadn't grown up here. He'd shut all the windows of his apartment in the futile hope to keep out the heat, the stink and the humidity. He would be home soon, then he'd try to get some fresh night air in by openin' the windows. Of course that won't do him any good. An' not only 'cause the night air was just as foul.  
  
When the weather is like this the city is boiling. I heard automatic gunfire no two blocks away. A little further south a woman screamed "NO!" and the batsignal threw its desperate shadow against the low hangin' clouds. I withdrew a little further into the shadows and lighted another cigarette. I leaned back as I dragged down the poisonous smoke, and continued watching the house through half-closed eyes. Not that any unwittin' passer-by would notice since I was wearin' my usual big black eyeshades. Black eyeshades, in the middle of the night?   
  
Bit of a fashion victim? one might ask. Well it doesn't hamper my eyesight significantly, whereas lookin' into my deep, black eyes, without whites, iris or pupils, tents to put people off for some reason. I never go without them.  
  
Yup, that's me: Tall, dark an' handsome, all black T-shirt, dark green trenchcoat, black eyeshades and the twin nine millies. Tommy Monaghan, the coolest contract killer in town. The Hitman. Hey, this is Gotham City, you have to make some kind of fashion statement. I'm the best in a field of one. I specialize in Metahuman contracts, for the more dense of you - I whack superfreaks, the big baddies.  
  
I'm also the killer with a conscience. That means I'm pretty choosy with my contracts, and I only kill the bad   
  
guys.   
  
It's a way of livin', I suppose.  
  
The guy on the other side of the street is no Metahuman, but, well, the Gotham Knights lost again, any there my money went down the drain. But he qualifies. Maybe you still remember the New York City Headhunter a few years back. Yeah, the one that was all over the News, 'cause the NYPD never got anything on him. Back then he went by the Name Russell Nash, but my contacts state that his real name seems to be Conner MacLeod. And now it's gettin' interesting the name MacLeod appears in connection with quite a few beheadings in the Pacific Northwest, and even in Europe. But they never got any bulletproof facts on him.  
  
Well I don't need no facts. But he's not goin' to get whacked for somethin' he'd done in the Apple or wherever. My clients were a nice, young couple, belonging to Gothams City's High Society, with good Mob connections.   
  
Most good old Gotham families have such ties. This is a nice town to be rich in. Mr. MacLeod killed their ten   
  
year old adopted son, their only love an' joy since they seemed to be unable to have their own children. The boy, Kenny, was found in the wreckage of the swimmin' hall, his head floatin' in the cool, blue water. So now they want MacLeods, or whatever his name is, head - literally. Well that's Gotham City, for you; a lovely place.  
  
I charged them an extra ten grand.  
  
A car pulled into the parking lot in front of the building. It was MacLeods midnite-blue antique sportscar. I   
  
wondered how some people did that. Not by any right of probability should anyone be able to find a free parking space right in front of his own buildin' not in Downtown Gotham. One of the reasons I don't have a car. The main reason bein' repair fees. It's much more convenient to have your friends' cars perforated by multiple bullet holes. Never to mention all the slime an' gore.  
  
I noticed, that the car trailing him wasn't so lucky. I could see the woman driving the archtypical nondescript car, she wasn't lookin' happy. She slowly drove by hopin' for pastures greener.  
  
Despite the murderous heat MacLeod was wearin' a crumbled old trenchcoat. Ah... well I have to hide two nine-millies, an' stuff, an' at least do I look cool. That guy over there was just looking as if he'd slept in that damn thing for maybe the last three months. But he, too, had somethin' to hide. That lunatic carried a sword under his coat.  
  
I could see all that without even having to lift my head from where I was hidin', X-ray vision. Very neat.   
  
Especially when meetin' gals. But I was too far away to pick up his thoughts. If I tried at this distance I'd risk one hell of a migraine.  
  
The lights in the apartment were switched on only a short moment later. I reached for the smooth, silky coolness of the HK sniper rifle besides me, very much like a caress. I was about to pick her up when I noticed something down on the street. I was not the only one watching my quarry. The woman seemed to have found a place for her car. She was only armed with a camera, somethin' big an' professional, maybe nightvision lenses. The way she moved, so very attentive, was familiar. But I couldn't place her. Well, if she was after MacLeod, she was to late.   
  
But still in time for some nice action an' crime pictures.  
  
Like in the last few days MacLeod went straight for the fridge, got himself a beer, imported, took a big swig and then opened the window. I leaned onto one of the ever present gargoyles an' took careful aim. Soon I'd be at Noonan's, playin' some pool with the guys, havin' some ice-cold beer an' be listenin' to the most stupid duke of hell. MacLeod stood in the open Window, lookin' out into the night.   
  
A wonderful siluhette, a regular snipers dream. I hesitated. From this distance I might not be able to read his thoughts but I picked a bit of his emotions. I felt a tremendous tiredness, combined with a vital, almost electrical energy. Pretty strange. But not exceedingly so compared to demons and men in tights. So   
  
I did what I was taught. breathed out, corrected my aim and very gently pulled the trigger. The shot whispered trough the dusty night air. I got him right between the eyes. His head was flung back, an' gray matter sprayed all over the furniture. The bottle went out of the window an' splattered the watching woman with brown liquid.  
  
"Time to get the gory part done!" I thought, an' went to follow my own advice. This time Tiegel would be right about her boyfriend being covered in blood up to his elbows. An' as opposed to what she might be thinkin' was I not lookin' forward to that part, I'm not a butcher after all.  
  
I deposited the HK in one of the air-vents, were I could fetch her back later. The woman never screamed, despite her witnessing everything.  
  
I was thinkin' who she might be when I entered the house, an' when I checked on her, I found her gone. And so was the friggin' corpse. I mean there was lots of blood an' bits an' pieces of brain, but no friggin' corpse. 


	2. Alley melody

  
  
Noonan's is shabby an' seedy, smoky an' smelly, the place is depleted, old an' crumbled. It is also the place I would call home. An' Sean Noonan, the old retired killer who owns it, is all the family I have. I headed straight for the bar.   
  
"Moisture?" asked the demon from behind the bar. I nodded an' asked for Sean. The duke of hell screeched, "I am Baytor" an' gestured towards the back. I took my beer an' went lookin' for Sean.   
  
I was not in the best of moods. It was the first time someone stole my kill. I mean in what kind of world are we livin'?   
  
Yeah, I know, I know this is Gotham City, world capital of lunatics, madmen and the criminally insane. An' it's not only superfreaks like the Joker, Poison Ivy or the Penguin and God knows who else. Even worse are the supposedly good guys. I mean, look at the Batman, that psychopathic muscle man in tights.   
  
An' somethin' of that black hole of insanity also effects the people on the street. Sometimes I think they ought to build a wall around the city limits an' put a roof on top of it. Voila, the Gotham City asylum.  
  
But that was my kill, my money.... Ahww really. What a sick world.  
  
I told Noonan about the whole business. He only shook his head an' started talkin' about the good old days, when a killer still ... I interrupted one of his stories to ask if he'd heard anything about MacLeod. Was I the only one after his head? I don't like riddles.  
  
Sean couldn't help me much, but he'd ask round. I said goodbye and left.  
  
Natt was visitin' his sis' an' left me his car, which is more than a little generous, if you knew what I'd done to the last two cars of his. Well this one was a piece of junk to begin with. Maybe that bein' the reason...   
  
I drove around, thinkin' about what to do. The city looks different from this angle. The skyscrapers ought to be reaching high into the air catchin' the sunlight at day and the glitterin', dancin' streetlights at night and they do, in Metropolis or in New York. But here, they seem to reach down into the ground, suckin' in the light, nurturing shadows until they are able to walk in the sickly, orange daylight. There's always some monster loomin' above you. Most of the time, it's nothing but a gargoyle - but sometimes it is not.   
  
In short, I was thinkin' dark thoughts. Until something happened that broke my musin's...  
  
I wasn't drunk when I got into the car, well, not much anyhow. But you see, I had to try and drown the frustration of livin' in a sick world. Never mind. By the way, never let anyone say one bad word about Catwoman. She's got great "attributes"... and a good heart... and a skintight catsuit.  
  
Uh, where was I. Yeah, I wasn't seriously drunk, so I wasn't hallucinatin'.   
  
Still, there he was! Crossing the street in that crumbly, worn trenchcoat of his, not a care in the world and most of all, alive. He wasn't a zombie - I know a walkin' corpse when I see one.   
  
"Oh, fer fucks sake!" I thought to myself "This IS Gotham city after all!" This is kinda weird, maybe, but I have seen freakier stuff. So I followed him. I worried for a while, that my slow drivin' and this useless heap of junk pretendin' to be a car where a tad bit noticeable.   
  
But MacLeod was preoccupied. At every corner he stopped for a moment turnin' his head from one side to the other as if listenin' for somethin'. For all I know he listened to his inner child, or to a dogwhistle. Then he went into the proverbial dark alley. I love them places and Gotham breeds them, trains them and sends them out into the world as a stage for murder and slimy, rottin' alley-things.  
  
I gave him a few yards headstart. Then I kicked the bucket o' rust 'round the corner and found out that the bucket could indeed speed up quite impressively.   
  
MacLeod turned, and in turnin' he drew his sword from under his coat.   
  
"Damn," I thought "he's fast!"  
  
He had clearly expected something or someone else. Surprise was written on his face which looked white and strangely fragile in the glarin', merciless headlight.   
  
Then the car hit him. His eyes met mine for an instant, as man met bumper.   
  
The meeting was accompanied by an ugly, wet thud. The impact tossed him into the air and he hit first the hood and then the windshield in rapid succession before vanishin' into the night. The crashin', clankin' noise back there told me he had collided with a good old dumpster.   
  
I brought the heap to a screechin' standstill and jumped out. Both my guns at the ready I slided across the bunk. As I reached the other side the guy came up lookin' annoyed. I realized that I had been misinformed.   
  
That guy was definitely metahuman and I knew what that meant - I had seriously undercharged.  
  
Still a bullet to the head stops most of the metahumans and it irritates the rest of the bunch mightily.   
  
As I was following my own advice, I noticed something strange - strange even by my standards that include ten-armed gunwielding Nazi-demons and cuddly, man-eating zombie-baby-seals. This bastard ignored me.   
  
Imagine: There is a killer, walking towards you, firing one bullet after the other, and even though some of them miss, most of them don't. So I'd expect you to dive for cover, draw a gun, or stand in a hail of bullets and laugh at the puny mortal, or simply die, which, by the way, happens most of the time. That guy was scampering about in the trash, desperately searchin' for somethin'.   
  
His sword, I realized, he was searchin' for his sword, his fuckin' sword, and livin' in a world of superheroes and magic I wondered if he could only be killed by a swordthrust or something. Then I thought, oh, what the fuck. Let's see how he manages without his brains, and blasted half his head off from about two feet distance.   
  
He fell like a, well like a dead body, facedown in the trash.  
  
I didn't want to let go of my guns so I used my boot to turn him around. I was glad for the sticky darkness when I bent closer to make sure he was really dead. He was.   
  
O-k.! Next try on the gory part. I went to Nat's car to fetch the machete. Of course, it had gotten stuck between between the explosives an' the beer. Took a moment to dig it out. Too long a moment.  
  
When I returned the corpse was gone.  
  
Again!  
  



End file.
